This document relates to processing search queries.
The rise of the Internet has enabled access to a wide variety of content items, e.g., video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc. Content items of particular interest to a user can be identified by a search engine in response to a user query. One example search engine is the Google search engine provided by Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., U.S.A. The query can include one or more search terms or phrases, and the search engine can identify and, optionally, rank the content items based on the search terms or phrases in the query and present the content items to the user (e.g., in order according to the rank).
An initial search by a user may not return results that are of interest to the user. Accordingly, users may add, remove and/or modify search terms in search queries several times until the search engine returns the results that are of interest to the user. One way a user can modify a query to form a new query is to add subsequent terms to a predicate query, e.g., adding the term “forecast” to a previous query of “weather Atlanta” to form the new query “weather Atlanta forecast.” However, adding new search terms to the search query may not enhance the user experience if the search engine gives equal or additional weight to the added search term.